Surgical Anxiety Questionnaire: Turkish validity and reliability

The preoperative anxiety is common and the reported prevalence of preoperative anxiety among patients that underwent various types of surgery was found as high as 60%-90%. If anxiety before surgical intervention is not well managed, it may delay surgery due to changes in vital signs and increase the possibility of complications developing postoperatively. The aim of this study is to determine the reliability and validity of the Turkish version of Surgical Anxiety Questionnaire. This methodological study was conducted with 204 patients who agreed to participate in the study in Turkey. Before beginning the study, institutional permission was obtained from Provincial Health Directorate to perform the research in state hospital located in province. Ethics committee permission was obtained from University Clinical Research Ethics Committee. Cronbach's alpha reliability coefficient, Pearson's correlation, factor analysis, Bartlett test, Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) test and correlation were used in the assessment of the data obtained. The level of significance was accepted as 0.05. In this study, the Cronbach alpha coefficients for the Surgical Anxiety Questionnaire were 0.844 for the whole scale, 0.836 for the Anxiety related to Health subdimension, 0.734 for the Anxiety related to Recovery subdimension and 0.707 for the Anxiety related to Procedure subdimension. The item total point correlation values for the Surgical Anxiety Scale were found to be between 0.247 and 0.673. It is concluded that the Turkish version of Surgical Anxiety Scale is valid and reliable for surgical patients, in clinical and scientific research studies.